Southern California -- this just in

All Edison customers' power restored a week after windstorm

December 8, 2011 | 8:45
am

A week after a windstorm that knocked out electricity to hundreds of thousands of households and businesses in the region, Southern California Edison officials said Thursday that all of its affected customers have had their power restored.

The power company, which has come under fire for its response to the outages, said the last handful of customers in the San Gabriel Valley got electricity power back early Thursday morning.

The state Public Utilities Commission launched an investigation Wednesday into why large numbers of Edison customers were without power for days. Los Angeles County supervisors also lambasted Edison officials at their meeting Tuesday.

The company issued an apology to its customers Wednesday.

"In some cases in the hardest-hit areas, we were not able to achieve our restoration targets or provide accurate information about their service. On behalf of the entire company, I apologize," Edison President Ron Litzinger wrote.

The restoration process was slowed by hundreds of downed trees blocking access to poles, transformers and other equipment, slowed the restoration process, Edison spokesman David Song said.

"Our crews were hampered by a lot of the debris. This was an unprecedented event for us. We haven't seen anything like this in years," he said.

The windstorm affected a total of more than 433,000 Edison customers during the last week. The highest number of outages at any given time was more than 200,000, the utility said.

Edison crews are still out in neighborhoods doing cleanup, Song said.

Customers who may still having trouble with their power can call Edison at (800) 655-4555.